The structure of the O.T.O., like that of Freemasonry, is based on a staged series of initiations or degrees.
The essence of the Ordo Templi Orientis is in its higher degrees; strictly speaking only members of these degrees are considered to be members of the O.T.O. proper.

VII°: adoration of the phallus, both within and without.

VIII°: interaction outside the closed vessels of the vagina and the anus. Sexual fluids might be mixed with saliva and then rubbed into the absorbent tissues of the anus and perineum, as well as the external correspondences to the chakras (solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye, and crown). They also might be used to anoint the internal anus, then transferred as triune elixir (semen, anal elixirs, and saliva) back to the mouth. The fluids may also be anointed on the eyelids and/or the entire cabbalistic middle pillar.

IX°: interaction within the vagina involving either menstrual blood or the secretions of a woman when sexually aroused.

X°: impregnation and fertilisation of an egg; also the act of creation or succession (for example, the election of the Outer Head of the Order / O.H.O.).

XI°: two-fold— (i) isolation in the anus where there is no interaction at all — (ii) interaction with excrement and small amounts of blood (when small wounds occur through intercourse), mucus and, of course, the mucous membranes that lead directly to the blood supply. Aleister Crowley’s own preference was that "I am inclined to believe that the XIth degree is better than the IXth degree", diary entry of 26th August 1916; diary 1913 about a boy showered with "foaming seed": "While the other in his orgasm receives the waters." "Let it be no sin to us to have buggered the virle bum." "While the priest thrusts his thyrsus between boyish buttocks, All is accomplished; come Holy Dove!" http://bluepyramid.tripod.com/index/id4.html. "The Equinox" IV;2, Maine 1998, 405.

The 1919 portrait of Lam drawn by Aleister Crowley: foetus per anum.

Ultimately in the O.T.O’s sexual magick everything came down to semen — more recently likened to a computer hard–disk pre–formatted to be loaded with software and used at will. Crowley: "The industrial use of Semen will revolutionize human society"; journal 8th August 1923.

To avoid charges of quackery, the current American O.T.O. or 'Caliphate' denies the medicinal use of this Elixir of Life, and claims that it "does not practice medicine" (as noted in ‘Thelema Lodge Newsletter’, Berkeley, September 1993).
For sacramental purposes, this O.T.O. uses hosts made with honey, meal, and wine-lees called Cakes of Light (which may however contain small quantities of blood or semen: "ashes from burned cakes of light prepared according to AL III;23[–25] would be acceptable as an additional ingredient") (Supreme Grand Council meeting, April 3, 1993).

According to Crowley these Cakes may include menstrual fluids, but "In my Mass the Host is of excrement"; diary 5th July 1920 — magically speaking, blood and excrement attracting spirits, sperm keeping them alive. He also noted in his diary on May 30, 1923 that "The Dalai Lama is right to have the faithful eat his excrement."

source: hermetic.com

1963–1967 the Swiss O.T.O. used a total of 3,000 Hosts obtained by the Thelemites from a genuine Catholic convent. The incense-grains had been opportunely supplied by the Chief Sacristan of St. Gallen Cathedral. And the wine for the Crowley Mass came directly from the Bishop.

Baphomet

There are many other elements of O.T.O. doctrines that can prove inimical to its public relations image: the requirement for the crucifixion of a frog in a O.T.O. related ritual (in context of the VI°, in 1916), advice given to members that they can consider those without the pale of the Order as inferior beings (in 1919) (current O.T.O.-politics states in 1999 that "OTO does not now encourage its members to treat those outside the Order as inferiors who possess no rights." http://lib.oto-usa.org/sabazius/essays/memo0101.html), and blatantly anti-democratic elements in the various O.T.O. constitutions, antisemitic statements and texts that could be said to interfere with religious freedoms, just to mention a few. Theodor Reuss went further in 1920: within the O.T.O. community the use of money was to be forbidden. Every member over 18 was obliged to labour daily; those refusing to work were to be punished by forced labour. In Reuss’s O.T.O. utopia, each child was brought up by the community, where doctor-priests under parental supervision would teach children from the earliest age on that the sex organs were holy (maybe Crowley’s idea in 1921 that all children from infancy should be accustomed to witnessing every type of sexual act came from this: "Moreover, the Beast 666 [Crowley] adviseth that all children shall be accustomed from infancy to witness every type of sexual act." Israel Regardie: "The Law is for All", Arizona 1975, 114, http://hermetic.com/legis/new-comment/chapter-i.html. "Let children educate themselves to be themselves. Those who train them to standards cripple and deform them." "On the Education of Children", in: "The Revival of Magick", Tempe 1998, online at sekhetmaat.com/wiki/Documents/On_the_Education_of_Children). Those who were not found capable of producing healthy children by a medical board were not allowed to breed, while those who produced children despite this decree would be punished by forced labour. These extreme ideas have not survived in modern versions of the O.T.O., if indeed they were ever espoused beyond Reuss’s essay.

Infant Body Suit sold by shekhetmaat.com

Aleister Crowley maintained that the task of his Ordo Templi Orientis was "to restore Christianity to its real status as a solar-phallic religion." (letter from Crowley to William Bernard Crow (1895–1976), dated 11th November 1944).
While the O.T.O.’s initiatory system is a sort of bureaucratic club game, it has a religiously associated section under its obedience: The Gnostic Catholic Church.

In 1906, Chevalier Le Clément de St.-Marcq had published a booklet about the Sacred Spermatophagy, called ‘L'Eucharistie’. It described what Reuss called the ultimate secret of the religious aspect of the O.T.O.: the more sperm you eat, the more the manifestation of the Christ takes place within you: no women are necessary for that. The consumption of sexual secretions borders on anthropophagia, the assimilation of selected individuals who possess awe-inspiring powers, in order to neutralise or even to use them. The Gnostic aim is to release the human from his stifling entanglement with the physical universe, and to help the pure Spirit in its return to its Divine potential. One common characteristic of all the Spermo-Gnostics in the context of most of the many O.T.O.-versions is a reduction of the sexuality unto the male physiology. Orgasm for pure reasons of lust is avoided, unless ejaculation is refrained from, or the intention is directed to drift away from the immanent orgasm and concentrate itself upon wishes that under the circumstances appear worldly in the extreme. Sperm remains the point of focus. In the enthusiastic high of the genetic and gnostic superiority of the male, femaleness vegetates in a bizarre no-mansland of androgynous necessity and almost reprehensible superfluousness. The female Logos remains mute.

Ernst Tristan Kurtzahn: The Gnostics. — About the Gnostic Catholic Church,
Androgyn + Gynandria, and the immissio membri virilis in vaginam in avoidance of the ejaculatio seminis.

In the O.T.O.'s Gnostic Mass (Aleister Crowley's Gnostic Catholic Mass (Liber XV — Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae) a host called Cake of Light contains the Logos. Ingredients may be sperm, blood and vaginal secrets. This cake of light is made outside the ritual of the Gnostic Mass. It is given its character in the making. It is consecrated, but not transsubstantiated. The deity in the cake of light is the “Childe,” properly an aspect of Horus (or a sort of homunculus) and not of either Osiris or the cognate Christ. Transmutation is change of form, in the instance of the pertinent passage in Crowley’s Mass, by chemical processes of digestion. Transsubstantiation, on the other hand, is change of essential quality without change of form. Transmutation is a physiological process. Transsubstantiation is a non-physical process. Thus, a cake of light is transmuted in the preparation, to afford a character appropriate to the “miracle of the Mass”: it’s a sexmagical medium of the participant’s Will (the ritual itself can be interpreted as a mirror of the perpetual creation of the Universe). Similar passages can be found in the VIII° ritual of the 'Caliphate' O.T.O.: "and, forasmuch as meat and drink are transmuted in us daily into spiritual substance, I believe in the Miracle of the Mass. […] This is the Blood and the Body of the Logos." Consumation of the host is necessary, body contact. Some say, it is not the host that is changed but the consumer of the host. Through contact with saliva, chewing, stomach acid. This is the transformation, the unification of the host with the consumer. The thelemic host changes the consumer – contrary to the Roman Catholic host. A Roman Catholic host is said to be transsubstantiated during the RC Mass, a change of its invisible essence (for the entering of the real-presence of the Christ) without a change in the appearance and chemical qualities of the thing. If a thing such as that was both transmutated and transsubstantiated to the body and blood, it would become actual bleeding meat from the transmutation.

Aleister Crowley, diary 30th June 1920: "When I was [Eliphas]
Levi, I drew myself as Ayin or Baphomet, 'The Devil', with the Beast's Head. This is the Beast throned, crowned, exalted; the leaper, the erect, the butter-in. Her womb is my city, Babel. This Ayin is then my Phallic Will, my Holy Guardian Angel, Aiwaz, who was afterwards called Satan." Diary 19th/20th January 1918 about Baphomet: "I
find 729 = the curse of Satan! Of course."
The name Baphomet is used to signify the Lion-Serpent or Semen. This is the Blood of the Phallus in which its life-force is concentrated. The Phallus is the Wonder-Tree (in Crowley's Gnostic Catholic Mass) and the semen is the sap that continues its existence from generation unto generation. Baphomet as the Semen is also the Holy Ghost, the continuity between the Father and the Son, and one part of the matter of the Sacrament. This is the Holy Spirit on the Inner.

The technical term for the bishopric in the context of the O.T.O. Phenomenon is Wandering Bishop or Episcopi Vagantes. This status is not defined by character qualities, not by education or theological position. These bishops are not elected by a canonical church, are not proposed as an ordain by a suffragan and not bound to a historical episcopal see or consecrated by an official bishop according to the canonical procedure. A real bishop is not a successor of a sole apostle because only the synod/college of bishops in toto is heir to the college of the apostles. Therefore: no Wandering Bishop has a real apostolic succession. There is no Holy Ghost in Wandering-Bishop-consecrations. Their instrumentum consecrationis is of no apostolic value. Nevertheless, Wandering Bishops are collectors of papers and diplomas. In this context, Reuss tried to make Crowley’s Gnostic Catholic Mass the "official religion for Freemasons" in 1920. In vain. In his introduction to the ‘Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae’, (Zuerich 1955) on page 4 Hermann Joseph Metzger claimed the “Antiochite-Jacobinic Succession, Syro-Malabarite Line of Mar Athanasius.” Today, some new O.T.O.-groups (e.g. the ‘Caliphate’) try to copy this scheme.

The Typhonian Order (sometimes called Typhonian O.T.O.) is concerned with effective transmissions and communications from outerspace for the purpose of opening Gateways.
The Typhonian deities denote specific operations of psycho-physical alchemy which involve essences or elixirs secreted (thrown out and/or considered unclean) by the human organism. Its formula is that of the XI° involving kalas that are entirely absent from the masculine organism.
There is no comparison to other O.T.O. versions, essentially because there are no group rituals or ceremonies of initiation at any stage of the degree structure. The basis of initiation is the assimilation of direct magical and mystical working. It follows that all initiation is in effect self-initiation. There is a small amount of set gradework in the Typhonian Order. However, the emphasis is on the initiate charting his or her own course. There is of course the experience of others to draw upon.

Michael Paul Bertiaux explains the structure of the Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua in 1987:"The next Aeon will be male homosexual (Typhon) and lesbian (Ma'at formula) strongly." In Bertiaux's 16 degree system of the O.T.O.A. sexmagick starts with the
VIII° (swords), IX° (cups), X° (wands), XI° (coins). Then there are the higher secrets related to the tattwas and the elements: XII° (prithiwitattwa), XIII° (apastattwa), XIV° (vayutattwa), XV° (tejastattwa), XVI° (akashatattwa), these latter four grades being purely homosexual degrees.

It was Guido Wolther aka Grandmaster / Frater Daniel (18°, 33°) who wrote several rituals of the Fraternitas Saturni in the 1970s. One 18° ritual full of blood and semen roused strong feelings when made public, while many of Wolthers' sex-magical drawings and writings did the rounds.

Guido Wolther's sexmagical drawings of the early 1970s consisted of the usual egpytian and hebrew symbols that can be found in western occultism. Wolther focused on awkard images of the penis and vagina. Similar to Johannes Göggelmann aka Saturnius, Wolther seemed to claim scientificity and authenticity in order to ascribe meaning to his private reality. His world wanted to go beyond the normal, he wanted to step over the threshold which causes death to others or "leaves them ill at body and soul."

Transgender

The term gender denotes either the male or female division of a species, especially as differentiated by social and cultural roles and behavior, the term sex the biological aspect of the sexes, thus also including the context of semen and spermatozoon.
The occult clichés of sexuality, gender, male, female, the entire topography
of the sexes and their various representation have stirred an awareness,
spermo­gnosticism and sexmagic have come under closer scrutiny in connection
with the topic of transgenderism. (The term transident is mostly used in the psychiatric fields of the USA).
Besides the various O.T.O. groups which have begun to enter public view
thanks to the development of various forms of media, new mindsets and
guidelines as to the handling of gender specific issues have emerged which
have affected the traditional correlation with the rigid clichés inherent in
occultism. In this context the O.T.O. stands out because on the one hand it
propagates a type of religious transcendence while still mimicking
traditional clichés in its rituals.
Crowley's Gnostic Catholic Mass (Liber XV ­ Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae) poses the question of the conditions of sperm and transgender.
Some Crowley adherants simply convert the biological aspect, semen and
sperm, as well as the question of gender to the symbolical level, where
allegedly everything can be resolved easily. Even if the semen contains
spermatozoa or not, if the priest or priestess is a transgender, some
participants in the Gnostic Catholic Mass maintain that what truly matters is what the congregation (regardless of their sexual organs), really (or because they want to) experience during Mass. This opens up a large can of
worms, for a symbolic Mass would cease to be a catholic one. There are various discussions.

In the Fraternitas Saturni the intricate topic of sperm is certainly not a key point of which the lodge revolves. It agrees to safely remain within the general social context.
In 2005 a 36-year-old member 'came out' by disclosing the change from male
to female, in spite of knowing the "homophobic attitude of some of my
brothers." She went on to say, "How can I make people understand the great joy and happiness it was for me to be allowed to be as I feel? My special thanks go to my dear sisters who accepted me with amazing honesty and
openess and who are now helping me to adjust being a women in a comfortable
surroundings. I am aware just how unusual it must seem to some of my
brothers and sisters, mainly to my brothers, how threatening it must seem to
those who perhaps are afraid of feeling these same impulses in themselves
which contradict social norms. I am not deceiving myself."
Personal problems have cast a shadow over her membership and from 2006 she
has taken time away.

Spermophagy

Regarding Aleister Crowley's antidemocratic, racist and misanthropic writings, followers point out: "The reason [...] aspects of Thelema are omitted [in public discussion] indicates the actual problem with presenting Thelema as a religion and attempting to get Thelema sanctioned by the government or approved by the public: Thelema is ultimately in contrast to and transgressive of normative society. Thelema rejects the morals and values of normative society and acts to transgress and violate these norms. From the inclusion of intoxicants in ritual, to the positive view of sexuality, which frequently is seen as promoting promiscuity, to the pro–authoritarian and Nietzschian aspects of Thelema, normative society has much to reject in Thelema and conversely, Thelema encourages its adherents to reject most aspects of normative society.". "Journal of Thelemic Studies", 1;2, 2008, page 40. See The Templar's Reich.